


Letter to a Young Spy

by baroque_mongoose



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Gen, Letters, Monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 22:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2789594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroque_mongoose/pseuds/baroque_mongoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the spymasters in the British Intelligence Service thinks that their new young rising star could benefit from a few words of advice from a very old hand.  Hence, this letter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letter to a Young Spy

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shtetl Days](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/87842) by Harry Turtledove. 



> This is well out of the time sequence of the other stories. I will be returning to the regular sequence later. (It's mostly somewhere around 1915 in my head at the moment, for anyone interested; this letter is early 1950s.)
> 
> The relevance of Harry Turtledove's story is explained in the end note.

I have been asked to write to you by one of your spymasters; I imagine you will know exactly which one I mean. That person speaks of you in very glowing terms. I understand that you are the most promising young agent in the British Intelligence Service for many years. Nonetheless, this individual still feels that you may be in need of whatever advice or wisdom I can provide, although I am a very old man now. It is only through the wonders of modern medical science that I am alive to write to you at all.

The first and foremost thing to remember is that, as a spy, you are not your own person. You are a servant of your country in exactly the same way that a soldier is; and, indeed, the two professions have some other things in common, of which I shall write shortly. There is no room for ego or for complaint. For this reason, romantic involvements while you are working as a spy are necessarily problematic, because, when you do not belong to yourself, you cannot pledge yourself to another person. I am not suggesting that you should avoid them altogether, for we are all human and most of us fall in love. However, when you do enter into a romance, you should always be aware that you will eventually have to choose between the young lady and your profession, and you should not embark on the romance at all if you know from the start that your choice will be the latter.

The purpose of both a soldier and a spy is to protect their country from enemies. While the soldier does this through physical fighting, you, if you are reasonably careful, will not have to do a great deal of this, though you will no doubt have been well trained to cope with the few situations where you do. Most of your fighting will be done using your brain; it is not for nothing that spy services are also known as “intelligence”. Unlike a soldier, you are not there primarily to kill, though at times you may be forced to do this. You are there to neutralise any threats by out-thinking and out-manoeuvring them. It is like a grand multi-dimensional game of chess, in which all the pieces are living and you are but one of them. You have no control over which of the boards you are placed on, but, once you are placed there, you do have a fairly large amount of control over how you move. Every move you make affects the other pieces, including those who are not involved (or not knowingly involved) in the current game; therefore, you have a duty to move carefully.

As a spy, it is easy to fall into the mindset that one is constantly surrounded by enemies, and this is indeed usually true in the sense that it is always necessary to take due precautions against them. However, no matter how many enemies you have around you, they will – unless you are in some unusually isolated situation – always be greatly outnumbered by non-combatants. Just as a good soldier takes care not to harm those not actively involved in a conflict, so also does a good spy. You may, for instance, have to obtain information from some innocent third party. Do this by all means, but ensure as far as you can that they are not compromised or otherwise put into a difficult position by giving you this information. If at all possible, indeed, you should see to it that they actively benefit; for a start, it is only fair, since they have given you something you needed, and, besides that, it will make them more willing to help you a second time if that should ever be needed. The best way to approach people is to take a genuine interest in them and help them whenever you can reasonably do so. I have seen agents who fake this interest, but they never do so well as those who actually have it. People may be deceived at the conscious level, but they sense something false at a deeper level.

Though the bulk of your fighting is not done with physical weapons, you will almost certainly still be wounded now and then, and these wounds are at least as likely to be mental as physical. A spy is constantly faced with moral dilemmas, and many of these are effectively unwinnable. I consequently took some fairly serious psychological damage, which generally manifested itself for many years in the form of suicidal inclinations. These matters are far better understood now than they were when I was a spy, and therefore, if you feel any symptoms of mental damage, I would strongly advise you to be as quick to seek medical attention as you would if you had, say, a broken bone. I would not like to think of anyone else having to struggle as I did.

Never be too quick to judge others. A person's circumstances are not the person. Very often, the person with the most insight into a situation is among the most humble and unregarded people involved. Do not neglect to be friendly towards children, the elderly, those with obvious disabilities, those who are poor or otherwise on the margins of society. You will be giving them a great gift, and it is often astonishing what they will give you in return by way of information that they had no idea was so valuable to you. But, again, do not simply be friendly towards anyone in the hope of what you might get from them, for I assure you, they will know.

Now, it is very often said that a person's character shapes their thoughts, and these in turn dictate their actions. This, I believe, is true to some extent. But it is also true in reverse. Any action, if it is done sufficiently to become a habit, can shape our thoughts, and those thoughts can then influence our character. I would like you to remember this in particular, because it is extremely relevant to the matter of being a spy.

Let me explain that further. I have already touched on the subject of moral dilemmas, and I have also said that at times, unfortunately, a spy may be forced to kill. Now, nobody in the Intelligence Service starts out as a natural killer. Although much has changed since I was a spy, I am well aware that the selection process still weeds out anyone who shows signs of being overly bloodthirsty, and these people are generally diverted to the armed forces, where their natural inclinations are likely to be more usefully employed. The philosophy of the Intelligence Service has always been that, while killing may occasionally be necessary, it should be viewed as a last resort, something which should be done only if there is no other means to prevent the target from killing other people (including oneself).

When I originally joined the Service, I was quite determined that I would avoid killing anyone at all. I was confident in my ability to think or talk my way out of almost any situation. I was not, I must admit, very self-confident in any other respect at the time; that tends to improve with age. But I did know I was quick-witted, and, while that was true, it did rather lull me into a false sense of security. Within a few months of starting my first overseas assignment, I had to kill a man who would otherwise have killed both me and another person. I had thought I was mentally prepared for that, but I was quite clearly nothing of the kind. The effect on me was not only devastating at the time, but it reverberated down the years. I never quite managed to lay that ghost to rest until, by a kindly twist of Providence, I eventually saved the life of the son of that man I killed in Paris.

And, yet, despite all that, the next time I had to kill, it was easier. I was in some internal turmoil afterwards, but I was much calmer at the time. By the time I was sent to protect Lady Heterodyne, I had no compunction about relieving one of the Baron's soldiers of his rifle and sniping at his comrades from the roof of a wagon; granted, I aimed for their heads, because if I must kill I will do it as quickly and cleanly as I possibly can, but I brought a number of them down before I was interrupted by Captain DuPree, of whom, I think, you have heard some tales. I was not happy to have to do that, but I knew I had to, and therefore I did it. Lady Heterodyne had to be protected at all costs; well, that was a cost.

Now, some years later, I had to help to escort Lady Heterodyne to England. That story is told so often that everyone knows it, or thinks they know it; but, as is the way of oft-repeated tales, it has become somewhat altered and embellished, and I regret to say that these variations generally make a hero of me in a way that I never was. In particular, for the record, I did not take on an entire pack of Martellus von Blitzengaard's wolves single-handed, and the fact that anyone could possibly think I did makes it perfectly clear that nobody here has the faintest conception of what the creatures were actually like. But let us stick with the actual historical facts. This von Blitzengaard desired power, and to further that aim he wished to marry Lady Heterodyne, who was, quite reasonably, unwilling. He therefore altered her body chemistry in some way while she was unconscious, to force her to remain close to him; fortunately, she was able to modify one of the Wasp Eater weasels to act as a substitute, and so she escaped him. When she told me what he had done to her, I was, as you would expect, utterly furious, for no gentleman behaves in such a fashion.

Through a somewhat complicated sequence of events, we were delayed at the Corbettite fortress depot of St Szpac on the way to Paris, and there von Blitzengaard caught up with us. When I saw him, I quite naturally wanted to punch him in the jaw; but as I thought a little more, I realised something else. I knew that, if I killed him, I would not have the slightest regret in doing so.

That realisation brought me up short. That was not the person I had been when I started out. Granted, the man was an appalling cad whom I had every reason to dislike; but I had met other appalling cads in my time, and, while I had certainly punched a few deserving jaws, I had certainly not coldly contemplated murder. Moreover, he was a serious danger to Lady Heterodyne, and it might well be that I would have to kill him at some point to remove that threat, if, of course, I got the chance. Yet I knew that if I had no regrets about it, I would no longer be Ardsley Wooster. I did not know exactly who I would be, but I knew I did not want to be that person.

You see, I had killed too many times. Every time, it had been forced on me by circumstances, and every time I had considered all the other options first as far as I could. But, for all that, my mind had walked down that track too often, and it was becoming too well beaten. I could not afford to allow it to turn into a highway, for there was only one place to which such a highway could ever lead.

And so I made a resolution that, however I dealt with von Blitzengaard, I would go to every possible length not to kill him. I certainly intended him to know I was angry with him, and I had no qualms about expressing that physically if the occasion should arise; he was larger and stronger than I was, after all. I should naturally not have been inclined to hit him if he had been smaller. Also, protecting Lady Heterodyne had to come first, whatever happened, and it might well be that _someone_ would eventually have to kill him. But this time, for everyone's sake, I knew it would not be me.

So I did not kill him; and, not only that, but I deliberately put all thoughts of doing so out of my mind. It may be very satisfying on the surface to imagine a scenario where a man like von Blitzengaard is in a position where he can never again resurface as a threat, but it is still only another way of walking down the same excessively beaten track without causing any actual harm in the outside world. That track had to be avoided altogether until the grass had had a chance to grow on it again.

All this is to say that the greatest dangers of being a spy are not the external ones; you are, after all, very well trained to cope with those. They are to be found within you, and spying will force you to face them, no matter how good or well-meaning a person you are to begin with. I cracked under them, to some extent, but even that is preferable to hardening until they no longer seem to touch you. It is an illusion. If you do that, you will be like an egg boiled in its shell; you will no longer be anything like so fragile, but that will be only because you are quite dead inside, although the exterior still looks exactly the same.

Thank you for bearing with the ramblings of an old man; and finally, good luck, Mr Bond. You will need it.

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to do a "compare and contrast" between Messrs Wooster and Bond ever since I realised just what an unfussily good man Mr Wooster is; but it was only last night that I had the idea of doing it in the form of "advice not taken", because that was when I read Harry Turtledove's haunting and penetratingly intelligent story "Shtetl Days". That story is all about how actions can shape thoughts, beliefs, and eventually character.
> 
> I roleplay Mr Wooster in various places, and I have recently been having him quite justifiably steaming with anger against von Blitzengaard, an anger which is further fuelled by the fact that von Blitzengaard styles himself a gentleman. It was therefore reasonable that, if he was going to find himself suddenly confronting the fact that there was someone he would actually not mind killing too much, von Blitzengaard would be that person; and when he had his shock of realisation, I assure you, so did I. This story came straight out of that. So, thank you, Harry Turtledove; and anyone here who hasn't read "Shtetl Days", I urge you to do so, for you will not regret it.


End file.
